The Sword of the Lady (57 page)

″Ah . . . sorry,″ Roderic said, and sounded as if he was, or at least embarrassed. ″Ah . . . welcome, welcome, holy
seidhkona
. The Chief will be pleased and honored; we didn′t think you′d be here this Yule!″

″If I′ve made it every Yule Eve for twenty-four years, I can do it once more,″ she said. ″This is the godwoman Thorlind Williamsdottir. And these are men of Kalk the Shipwright′s garth, Sven Jacobsson and Ingmar Marcellesson, who swore to see me safe here for the festival.″

″Come, come, lady Heidhveig,″ Roderic said. ″And all of you. Let′s get you inside, and a guest cup inside you, and your beasts fed and stabled!″

She started to nod—right now a cup of hot cider or mead sounded
very
attractive—when she felt a sudden sense of pressure, no, of
Presence
. They stopped, staring, as she flung out her hand to silence them. The wind blew louder, the low throbbing rising to a screech, and for an instant it tugged at her cloak until the ends flew forward like wings. The cold cut like a knife, a white pain that seemed to light the land around her. She could see every flake of snow and dead leaf and pine needle, hear the very thoughts of the martins and mink and the bears curled sleeping in their dens.

No, not sleeping—they too were stirring, waking to awareness of a power greater than the storm. Snow muffled all sound but the wind′s scream now, yet she could hear hoofbeats, or perhaps it was the thudding of her heart
.

″Can′t you hear
them
?″ she heard herself say. ″Can′t you
feel
them?″

She twitched as energy surged through her, the old familiar thrill of ecstasy that had won her allegiance long before the Change made all the old stories real.

″What?″ Roderic said; Thorlind stepped forward silently and took her arm, lending her strength.

Her eyes sought to pierce the swirling darkness. ″The Hunt rides tonight,″ she whispered, feeling her voice alter cadence as if she were already in trance. ″
He
rides the wind, and the dead thunder behind Him over the rainbow bridge. The foam that flies from their horses′ bits will bless the land. I feel
His
eye upon us, I hear the crying of His hounds.″

Old Man
, she continued silently.
What are you up to now? What hero will you invite this night to join that ride?

Roderic took a step back. One of his companions clutched at his chest, probably at an amulet; the other drew the Hammer. Heidhveig took a deep breath, feeling the intensity of that awareness fade, and her mouth quirked. Her folk gave the Allfather His due . . . and most of them were just as pleased not to attract His particular attention; Thor was a lot more popular.

The one-eyed Wanderer, the God of wolf and raven, the Terrible One who sent the madness of battle and the mead of poetry to men . . . had his own purposes. She believed those purposes served the ultimate good of the world and of humankind, but she knew that to achieve them He would spare neither Himself nor His chosen ones.

After that she saw little of the garth and its buildings except a blur of lighted windows and folk greeting her. The shock of warmth as they left their outer clothing in the vestibule brought her fully back to herself, and to her aches and pains as that warmth gradually eased them.

The chieftain′s hall of Eriksgarth was L-shaped, the shorter end a large frame house built long before the Change as the core of a farm; the longer wing was the hall proper, added afterwards as time and resources permitted. Bjarni and his wife Harberga Janetsdottir greeted her, friendly as always—she′d been an unofficial grandmother to them both from their childhoods—but with a trace of tension that told her Roderic had repeated her words.

″You shouldn′t travel in weather like this!″ Harberga scolded. ″What if you′d been caught in a real storm, coming up from the coast?″

She was tall and fair, her braided hair up beneath a kerchief, and a six-month belly stretching out the blue wool of her hanging skirt and the embroidered linen panel of her apron, held by silver brooches at her shoulders.

″You′ll catch your death!″ she went on.

″When you′re past eighty that′s not something that can be avoided,″ she said.

But she let them fuss her into a deep chair beside one of the two stone hearths on either side of the hall; the area before it was the honor seat, where the chief and his lady and important guests were placed. Some purists had wanted to use a firepit down the center, and she remembered Erik roaring out what he thought of
that
with an epic vocabulary that he
hadn′t
gotten from the Eddas.

More like the 82nd Airborne
, she thought reminiscently as she sank into the cushions with a sigh. It had started with
you shit-for-brains dickweeds, do you think the Gods
want
morons for followers
and finished with
freeze your
own
balls off
, you
don′t have any use for them
!

Fire boomed amid a sweet scent of burning pine in the fireplace of rough granite, on andirons whose ends rose into wrought dragons; the slanted iron plate at the rear helped cast the heat into the long room. Tapestries fluttered on the walls; the bare logs between were carved in sinuous patterns, hung with round painted shields and racked spears, bow and sword and ax, and mail byrnies that glittered darkly in the wavering light. More carvings ran on the railed gallery that ran around it at second-story height. Two rows of pillars made from the trunks of whole white pines and wrought into figures of gods and heroes ran the length of the stone-flagged floor, reaching up into the dimness of the rafters; some carried rings of lanterns at twice head-height on iron wheels.

Bjarni poured her cider with his own hands, into a big ceramic mug with
New Sweden Midsomar Festival 1997
printed on it. He was only a little taller than his wife, but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, his cropped beard and shoulder-length hair as brick red as his father′s had been, his eyes blue and steady. The drink hissed and steamed as he plunged a glowing poker into it.

″Ahhh, that′s good!″ she said, cradling the mug in knotted hands and breathing in fragrant steam like a memory of blossom time. As the heat eased aching joints she lifted it, murmuring softly:

By the time she had finished the blessing, the cider was cool enough for drinking. She let the hot sweet liquid run down her throat and get to work on the last of the chill.

The hall was thronged with scores of people, burly bearded men in tunic and breeks, women in long gowns—or sometimes practical traveling trousers themselves; the cloth a mixture of carefully preserved pre-Change brightness brought out for the festival and the more subtle colors of modern vegetable dyes. Either sex might wear an arm ring of gold or silver or steel. Her host had two pushed up on his thick biceps over the cloth of his tunic, the one that bore witness to his deeds and the oath ring he wore when leading rituals. Long weapons were left in the cloakroom or hung on the wall, but nearly every belt bore a fighting knife of the kind called a seax.

Most of the faces were folk she knew, or at least recognized and could place, like the two Micmac envoys in their embroidered tick coats and leggings. Voices sounded like surf, in the Norse-salted English of the Bjornings, or now and then in the nasal French dialect that was the second-most common tongue in Norrheim.

Children added their mite, running and playing with the big rough-coated dogs, or sucking on maple candy. There were friendly nods to her in plenty, but the folk left her in peace to talk with the chief.

″Quite a crowd,″ she said to Bjarni.

He and his wife drew up chairs beside her; a three-year-old girl came and crawled up into his lap and went to sleep with a kitten′s limp finality.

″Half the
wapentake
is here!″ the Bjorning chieftain said, settling his daughter against him with a father′s skill.

The tables and benches were set, running down both sides of the hall and centered on the dais that held the east-wall hearth; good cooking smells drifted in from the house where the feast was in preparation, but some of the guests were already eating slices of dark coarse barley-bread spread with liver paste or smoked salmon or cheese or butter and thick blueberry jam, or munching on apples from the bowls set out. Bjarni′s younger sister Gudrun oversaw a team of household women who were filling cups and carrying trays, proud in her new-budded womanhood and grave with the responsibility of helping her sister-in-law, a maiden′s long loose hair flowing auburn under a silver headband.

The guests would do justice to the feast as well. They′d come from many miles around, and traveling in this weather needed fuel!

Bjarni′s strong callused hand caressed his sleeping daughter′s white mane as he went on:

″A lot of the householders wanted to talk things over, and see the divination. Even with a good harvest, there′s been trouble—more quarrels than usual among ourselves, troll-man raids in the northern reaches, and the southmark. Rumors of trouble from the outlands. Folk are nervous and it′s a long time until the
Althing
meets.″

His hand touched his beard, and his voice fell. ″And what′s this young Roderic tells me about the Hunt?″

Heidhveig sighed again, letting her head fall back and her eyes close. ″He heard everything I
saw
,″ she said. ″But it always means something when—″

Then Roderic was there again; he hadn′t bothered to take off his parka, and snow melted on in thick patches on the wolverine fur. His hazel eyes were wide.

″Godhi
, lady—travelers!″

″Well, show them in!″ Bjarni said, irritated. ″You
are
on watch, boy!″

″No,
strangers
. Maybe thirty of them! Travelers from the far west, they say, and their leader not like any man I′ve ever seen before!″

He
was
a young man; his voice shook with excitement. Heidhveig set down the cup, staring towards the door.

Old Man
, she thought.
Have you set me to work
seidh
for a hero this holy eve?

The vestibule door opened, and the lights fluttered in the draught. Strangers crowded it, in the sort of warm wool tunics and pants the sensible wore beneath their outer gear for winter travel, but different from local style in a dozen subtle ways.

Her eyes went to their leader, drawn like iron to a magnet.

I can
smell
Orløg on him; a fate like tears and flowers and blood. What does Wyrd weave now?

He was a tall man, two fingers or so above six feet, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped and long-limbed; young, too, well into manhood but younger than her host′s thirty. He moved with the supple economy of a tiger, as if even his stillness was always complicit of motion, a thing of dynamic balance that held the promise of sudden blinding speed. When he shook his head slightly damp red-gold hair fell to his shoulders, framing a straight-nosed, high-cheeked, cleft-chinned face that might have been called beautiful save for the thin scar along his jaw and up nearly to the left cheek. There were more on his large shapely hands, but she could see from the look of his blue-green eyes that he would be more likely to smile than frown, on an occasion less solemn.

″It′s in peace and goodwill that we come,″ he said; his voice was a resonant baritone.

It was also full of a pleasant lilting accent she hadn′t heard since the old world fell, the soft west
-
Irish brogue of the Gaeltacht; and she recognized a trained singer′s control and pitch as he went on, filling the hall without strain or shout:

″Merry met to the Mistress of this Hearth and to the Lord of this Hall, and to all beneath their roof. We ask guesting if we are welcome, and only leave to pass on if we are not.″

The Bjorning chieftain stood, handed little Swanhild to his wife despite a sleepy protest and faced the tall stranger; silence was thick through the hall, and beneath it a humming curiosity. The newcomers were a worn, tough-looking crew, including the women among them—one even had an eye patch—but they had politely racked whatever long arms they carried in the cloakroom. None of the Eriksgarth dwellers were very alarmed, though a few men drifted to stand with arms crossed on their chests behind their leader . . . just in case, which also put them within grabbing range of the arms hung on the walls.

One of the Norrheimer proverbs was to trust no ice until you′d walked on it.

″I hight Bjarni Eriksson,
godhi
—Chieftain—here. Who comes to Eriksgarth on the holy eve?″ he said, his voice rumbling deep.

The stranger inclined his head politely to the master of the hall, and then again a little more deeply to Harberga . . . or perhaps to her and Heidhveig both, and touched the back of his right fist to his forehead for a moment. She noticed a small white scar between his brows then.

″Rudi Mackenzie am I, of the Clan Mackenzie; the totem of my sept is Raven. In my own land, I am son to our Chief, and our folk have hailed me as Tanist—as heir. These are my sworn men and followers and kin. We have traveled for near two years from the sunset ocean, over mountain and plain, forest and river and lake, and our goal is to find a ship to bear us on the eastern sea.″

A buzz of wonder rose from the crowd, then died away. Bjarni stepped forward and held out his hand; the two men gripped wrists, each taking the measure of the other, and each gave a very slight nod, as if liking what they saw.

″
Come heil
to you, Rudi Mackenzie,″ the Bjorning chieftain said formally; the phrase meant ″come in good health and be welcome.″ ″
Come heil
to your followers also.″